Ed Werstein shares his thoughts about winning the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award and two of his winning poems:
It is quite an honor to be chosen for the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Prize for 2018. I’d like to thank the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and The Hartford Avenue Poets poets for being so supportive of, and helpful with, my poetry. Listening to the remarks of the judge, Nicole Brown, I was very moved and it was a few seconds before I could start to read the following two poems which were part of my submission.
“Somewhen” is a poem I wrote after visiting my daughter-in-law’s family in Chile. Her father, Lalo, has since passed away. “Sleep” was recently chosen to be included in a brochure called Poems in the Waiting Room, which is distributed to hospitals and medical offices around Australia and New Zealand.
Thanks again to the CWW!
Somewhen
“Time may be an abstraction, but it helps the days go by.” –John Koethe
The last time I was with Lalo
we were sitting in his Santiago, Chile
living room watching a Pavarotti DVD
living room watching a Pavarotti DVD
tears streaming down our faces
and into our beer.
I was thinking how terribly lucky we were
to be alive. I could tell by his tears
he was thinking the same thing.
And I was thinking how terribly certain
it was that eventually we would not be alive.
He was thinking the same thing. Nessun Dorma
sung with such passion will do that to you.
And now Lalo is dying, but then,
so am I, and just as certainly.
so am I, and just as certainly.
Yet no one would write the sentence, Ed is dying.
But who could say I’m dying any slower
than he? Who could say with certainty
that I will outlive him, even though
his doctors have stopped treating him
and sent him home to die?
Some philosopher-physicists say
that all things just are. That time is an illusion
caused by our conscious sequential awareness
of what are discreet moments of being.
Everything just is.
Maybe Lalo and I are sitting on that couch
salting our beer somewhen right now.
What does now even mean if time is an illusion?
We’re born, we’re living, we’re dead.
We’re laughing, crying, singing, drinking. All now.
Five years, or fifty
or five-hundred.
And what if it were five-hundred?
And what if it were five-hundred?
It’s still just one big lucky chance
to live. to love, to be,
and then not be.
and then not be.
Sleep
taps me on the shoulder
and says she wants to take me to bed.
I tell her I’m going to finish
this chapter and then I’ll join her
and she’ll get what she’s after.
Sleep is impatient
keeps poking me
insisting I pay her some attention.
I think she is jealous of my books.
Sleep slips a mickey into my herbal tea
and has her way with me.
I wake at three
and realize she’s left me again.
She’s thrown my book on the floor
and hasn’t even bothered
to turn out the light.